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Emily Erkel

@emilyerkel

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I worked inside Hermès & Chanel.
The luxury industry, decoded.
Resale data + investment strategy.
Harvard | Forbes | Vogue | Co-founder @leprix

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Five Hermès secrets sales associates won’t tell you.

Here’s what actually works:
→ One big purchase beats ten small ones
→ Location strategy > spend amount
→ Wear your bags to the store
→ Kindness is currency
→ They repair vintage (yes, even secondhand)

The game rewards strategy, not desperation.

Save this. You’ll need it. 🗂️ taken in Paris,France by @emilyerkel

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6 months ago

Buying a Birkin on resale isn’t expensive. Buying one at Hermès is. Let me do the math.

Birkin 25 retail: $13,500. Pre-spend to get the offer: $27K to $81K depending on the ratio. Total cost to walk out with the bag: up to $95K.

And you don’t get to pick. They decide size, leather, color, hardware.

Resale: $25K for exactly what you want, right now.
The system isn’t hidden. It’s just unspoken.

Real question: Are you paying for the bag, or paying for permission?

Twenty years in luxury taught me the retail game has rules most people don’t know.

Follow for the math brands don’t advertise. by @emilyerkel

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5 months ago

I’ve worked inside Hermès, Chanel and now co-founded the world’s largest B2B luxury resale platform.

Over 20 years in luxury retail and resale, I’ve seen how this industry really operates.

The quota systems. The pricing psychology. The allocation games. The strategies most brands won’t discuss publicly.
This is what two decades taught me about how the system is actually designed — and why it works.

Save this if you’ve ever wondered how luxury really works. Follow if you want more. taken in Paris,France by @emilyerkel

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6 months ago

Gucci just put on another star-studded show in Milan. In May it took over Times Square, with Tom Brady on the runway and Kim Kardashian in the front row. The buzz is real.

The sales are a different story. Gucci’s sales were still declining in Q2, just more slowly than in Q1. Attention is easy to buy. Turning it into revenue takes longer.

Be honest: does celebrity buzz ever actually influence your next purchase?

#gucci #howluxuryworks #denma by @emilyerkel

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2 days ago

Chanel raised prices on September 23 with almost no warning. No weeks of rumors, no SA whispers.

It also wasn’t the usual across-the-board hike. Only the Chanel 25 and Matthieu Blazy’s Souplissimo, the Maxi Flap, moved, and the Classic Flap hadn’t changed as of that day.

New US prices:
Chanel 25: Mini $6,600, Small $7,000, Medium $7,400, Large $8,100
Souplissimo: Mini $6,200, Small Maxi $8,800, Large Maxi $9,600

The Small Chanel 25 is up 9.4% this year alone. @purseblog calls these two of Chanel’s newest and most talked-about bag families, and the prices followed the attention.

If one is on your list, ask your SA for today’s price before you go.

Which bag is next? Tell me below.

#ChanelPriceIncrease #Chanel25 #Souplissimo by @emilyerkel

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3 days ago

When I graduated from Columbia Business School, female protagonists appeared in roughly 9% of HBS cases. Nearly three quarters of the stories students were putting themselves inside were about men.

That stayed with me. And then my sister and I built something that Harvard Business School found worth writing about.
We are also the first case study on the luxury resale industry in HBS history.

Two daughters of immigrants, two women of color. Two people who were told no more times than I can count.

That is the lesson I take from being in that case. Not about business strategy. It is about the possibility.

Full essay on Substack. Link in bio.

#womenentrepreneurs #HarvardBusinessSchool #LePrix by @emilyerkel

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4 days ago

Chanel Spring 2027 at Paris Fashion Week will get called repetitive. I call it conviction.

One year after his debut, Matthieu Blazy returned to the Grand Palais with a flock of 95 birds overhead, sheer skirt suits, red and white tiger print tweed, and a new suit in a stretch fabric that looks like tweed.

The show opened and closed with Gabrielle Chanel’s own 2.55 from the archives. And as a true vintage lover, my jaw dropped.

A year ago the complaint was that it didn’t feel like Chanel. Now the complaints are that it feels the same. Chanel’s codes are ideas, not only tweed and camellias. It is the soul of Chanel, the freedom of movement and borrowing from the men’s wardrobe.

Expect long waiting lists and fights over the most stunning pieces, so text your SA now.

Repetition or conviction? Tell me below.

#ChanelSpring2027 #MatthieuBlazy #ParisFashionWeek by @emilyerkel

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5 days ago

Happy Hermès Spring 2027 Day to all those who celebrate! 🍊

My biggest question of course were where were the bags? Yes there was a So Kelly but no other Kellys and no Birkins. Regardless, Nadège Vanhée delivered a sultry yet sophisticated collection about air, with pieces I can actually wear daily (and have sent to my SA.)

The bags were buckets, crossbodies, and clutches you could carry all day in the heat. The So Kellys that walked made my wishlist ofc. But any classic Birkins and Kellys skipped the runway and showed up later at the Re-See and there was nothing classic about those.

The rarest bags in the room were in the front row. Hermès let the clothes do the talking.

Which bag would you carry to a Hermès front row? Tell me below. by @emilyerkel

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6 days ago

Chanel just had one of its strongest years in over a decade, growth outpacing both Hermès and LVMH. So why does walking into a boutique right now feel like this?

Slim pickings. No line. SAs who don’t know when the most wanted pieces are even coming or if they’ve been ordered at all.

Here’s the part that’s actually interesting. This isn’t Covid-era panic buying, where people rushed in because prices kept climbing. This is real, creative-driven demand, spanning bags, ready to wear, jewelry, the whole collection.

The demand is there. The inventory isn’t catching up to it.

#chanel #matthieublazy #luxuryretail by @emilyerkel

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9 days ago

Most people think there’s a formula for getting a Birkin. There isn’t an exact one and I’ve watched it break pekple.

Someone DMs me saying they spent 1:1 and got their exact wishlist bag. Someone else tells me they’ve spent over $200K and gotten nothing. Wildly different outcomes.

Even the leather hierarchy isn’t as clean as people think. Ostrich is the lowest priced exotic but lizard is actually rarer than crocodile. And exotics aren’t easier to get because they cost more, they go to long standing VVIP clients first.

If spend guarantees nothing, many are going resale.

Spent big and got nothing or spent little and got exactly what you wanted? by @emilyerkel

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10 days ago

An AI agent just raised a billion dollars to shop for you. Luxury looked at that news and drew a line anyway.

Physical stores still made up 81% of luxury sales last year, even with AI traffic to retail sites up over 300%. AI’s winning the browsing. It’s not winning the sale.

Use AI to research, compare prices, get smarter before you buy. Just triple check it after, it pulls from old data and gets things wrong more than people realize. Your taste is still yours to build. No AI does that part for you.

Have you used AI to shop yet? by @emilyerkel

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11 days ago

45 years. Five truths. Some of them cost me more than I want to admit. Full essay on Substack. Link in bio. by @emilyerkel

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13 days ago